A student has been suspended from school in America for coming to class dressed as a pirate.
But the disciplinary action has provoked controversy – because the student says that the ban violates his rights, as the pirate costume is part of his religion.
Bryan Killian says that he follows the Pastafarian religion, and that as a crucial part of his faith, he must wear ‘full pirate regalia’ as prescribed in the holy texts of Pastafarianism.
The school, however, say that his pirate garb was disruptive.
Pastafarianism gained wide attention when its key prophet, Bobby Henderson, wrote to the Kansas School Board during the height of the controversy over ‘Intelligent Design‘ being taught in science classes. His letter, also published on his website, demanded equal time be given to the teachings of the Flying Spaghetti Monster as was given to ID and evolutionary theory.
Since then, the Flying Spaghetti Monster has gained countless followers worldwide, although there are those who remain spagnostic.
The school, in North Buncombe, North Carolina, remains adamant that their decision to suspend Killian for a day has nothing to do with his religion, and quite a lot to do with his repeated refusal to heed warnings against wearing pirate outfits. (Source-Sunday Metro)
Pirates, unite! We must stand by our fellow Pastafarians when they are oppressed. AAAARRrrrrggggg.
No doubt these religious nutz will soon be crying persecution, their favorite mantra. But how many gay-friendly booths have you ever seen at religious celebrations, if you’ve ever attended one? I won’t even address in depth the presumption of trying to infiltrate the Pride Parade knowing full well they hadn’t paid for the privilege of doing so. Let this be a warning to all LGBT-haters, find your own venues to spew your nonsense, leave ours alone.
The Minneapolis Gay Pride Fest is the third largest GLBTQFA festival in the country. Of which we are very proud. Which is why we call it the pride festival.
Well, yesterday, three people form Hayward Wisconsin, which seems to be in a region that is a hotbed of bible thumping yahooism, were arrested.
Previously, these three people (father, wife, son, traditional family and all that) had a booth at the fest but this year were not issued a permit. The difference between previous years and this year is how much of the park fees were paid by the pride fest organizers. This year, for the first time, the festival organizers paid the full fee instead of getting support form the part, and therefore, had the legal right to determine exactly who would be issued rights to set up a vending booth and who would not be issued a permit.
The bible thumping yahoos are all about curing teh gayz, and rescuing them from the sin of homosexuality and stuff. The equivalent would be having a holocaust denial booth at a celebration of the founding of Israel, or a creationist booth at a science education convention.
I can’t recall a larger social issue for the gay community since Stonewall than that of the fight to legalize gay marriage across the country. A good look at this blog will tell you I’m in favor of legalizing gay marriage. This post is not an argument for giving up that effort. It’s a reality check for my brothers and sisters.
Lately the tone of discourse on the topic of same-sex marriage has caused me to wonder if gays are hoping that when we win the right to marry we will also enjoy an increase in acceptance and general social equality. I hope not, because I think just the opposite might occur.
We are already seeing an increase, ending soon I hope, of extremely violent and anti-social crimes being committed in the name of one god or another. When those on the far religious right feel that their power is being taken away, that their passionate beliefs are being challenged and even being marginalized, when they begin to realize that they are losing their choke-hold on the population they panic. In their panic they are lashing out in sometimes violent ways.
Religious extremism has killed a security guard, a doctor, Olympic athletes and over three thousand workers in two high-rise office buildings in New York. Religious extremists would like to turn this country into a theistic state so every time an American soldier has to kill an armed and dangerous enemy soldier, it can instead be portrayed as a war between Christians and Muslims. And hasn’t that played well throughout history. Religious extremists want to tell you what to think. The rest of us are begging you to think for yourselves.
The more that gays are out there, the more attention is called to the gay community, the more these wing-nuts will see us as a worthy target of their frustration and anger. How long before we hear about crosses being burned on the lawns of gay couples? Bigotry is not always a silent, festering sickness. Bigots can be like pimples, both pop if squeezed hard enough. The output of both is pretty disgusting.
I don’t mean to rain on the progress being made by gay people across the nation. I just want to send a warning message: Don’t mistake the courts granting marriage rights in some states as a sign that society is becoming more accepting of everyone who identifies as LGBT. Paul Lynde was accepted by my peers though it was clear he was a complete queen. Openly gay people have enjoyed acceptance in small numbers, better if they’re artists and entertainers. But there remains a general reluctance to accept gays in every day life. The Average Joe doesn’t want us in his church or on his bowling team. On his TV set, OK. Living next door with his husband? Not so OK, even though they’d be the first people he asked to watch the family cat while they go on vacation.
Let’s get the right to marry in all 50 states. That’s a worthwhile and acheiveable goal. But it won’t be the end of the road by any means. Gays have been demonized by the religious right (an attitude that has managed to infect even the generally liberal) so well and for so long that it will take several more generations before being LGBT is of minor interest to the general population. Unbelieveably, there are still racists, and how much longer have Blacks enjoyed acceptance by that same Average Joe?
We still have a long row to hoe. We shouldn’t let a bad case of social acne slow us down or defeat us.
Eleven gay bars in Seattle received letters today addressed to the “Owner/Manager” from someone claiming to be in the possession of ricin, a deadly poison. “Your establishment has been targeted,” the letter begins. “I have in my possession approximately 67 grams of ricin with which I will indiscriminately target at least five of your clients.”
“I felt sick when I read it,” said Carla, the owner/manager of Re-bar. “It’s so vile. It’s just hatred. It made me worry for all the other bars, and for my bartenders, and our clientele.”
According to the CDC’s website, someone who has ingested “a significant amount” will develop vomiting and diarrhea within the first 6-12 hours; other symptoms of ricin poisoning include hallucinations, seizures, and blood in the urine. There is no antidote for ricin but ricin exposure is not invariably fatal.
“I just had the police come pick [the letter] up,” said Keith Christensen, the manager of the Eagle, when reached by phone. Christensen had already heard about the letter from other bar owners and managers, and so he didn’t open it. “It’s probably nothing,” Christensen added, “but the economy is really screwing all the bars right now, and the last thing we need is something ramping up the not-go-out mode people seem to be in right now. It’s really freaky that someone would do something like this at a time like this.”
“The police have already come and gone,” said Roland, the manager at Madison Pub. “They collected the letter and that’s about it. I don’t think it’s anything to worry about it.” Roland admitted to being unnerved by the letter at first.
“But after the initial ‘what?’, it’s like whatever.”
A letter also arrived in The Stranger’s offices, addressed to the attention of “Obituaries.” The letter’s author said the paper should “be prepared to announce the deaths of approximately 55 individuals all of whom were patrons of the following establishments on a Saturday in January.” The listed bars are: the Elite, Neighbours, Wild Rose, the Cuff, Purr, the Eagle, R Place, Re-bar, CC’s, Madison Pub, and the Crescent. “I could take this moment to launch into a diatribe about my indignation towards the gay community,” the letter concludes, “however, I think the deaths will speak for themselves.”
Alison, Luying, and Tippett, local promoters and DJs who do nights at various bars around town, came up with the idea of organizing a pub crawl for this Friday night to show support for the bars that were threatened. (Source-the stranger)
Party on, my brothers and sisters. The best revenge is to show this cretian how pathetic his attempt at domestic terrorism really is.
Sponsors of the California ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage are seeking to nullify thousands of marriages between gay and lesbian couples performed after the state Supreme Court ruled them constitutional.
Rick Jacobs, founder and chair of the anti-Proposition 8 Courage Campaign, said he was “appalled” that the initiative’s supporters wanted to nullify the same-sex marriages that are already on the books.
“The motivation behind this mean-spirited and heart-breaking action should not be allowed to be buried in legal brief,” he said. “If Proposition 8’s sponsors plan to destroy lives, they should at least have the courage to admit it publicly.”
Opponents argue that the amendment cannot be applied retroactively, but proponents say the amendment is clear on that issue.
“Proposition 8’s brevity is matched by its clarity,” one of the briefs read. “There are no conditional clauses, exceptions, exemptions, or exclusions: ‘Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.’
” … Its plain language encompasses both pre-existing and later-created same-sex (and polygamous) marriages, whether performed in California or elsewhere. With crystal clarity, it declares that they are not valid or recognized in California.” (Source-CNN)
This comes as no surprise to those of us who have been warning of the effort to impose theocratic rule in the U.S. If the proponents of Prop. 8 were only concerned with preserving their “traditional” concept of marriage they wouldn’t be continuing to push their agenda. They won, for now. But their goal has never been limited to preserving the meaning of marriage. They will not rest until a solid precident has been established that allows theocratic belief to be the basis for state, and eventually federal, law. They want to create a loophole in the separation clause. Their ultimate and obvious goal is to establish a theocracy, a United States under God. Their god.
This is going beyond the desire to preserve an institution. That can be done without the need for retroactive nullifications. This latest effort even goes beyond mean-spirited. It’s nothing less than an attack on our form of government by theistic subversives, a form of fundamentalist terrorism not much different in motivation than those who fly planes into American buildings.
…this week the Vatican’s permanent observer to the United Nations, said the Holy See would oppose a resolution that would protect gays from being killed just because they are gay, because it would “add new categories of those protected from discrimination” and could lead to reverse discrimination against traditional heterosexual marriage.
The French resolution, scheduled to be proposed this week, recommends protecting Gays and Lesbians from being jailed or killed because of their sexual orientation and is being introduced to the UN on behalf of the European Union.
But Archbishop Celestino Migliore said, if adopted, the resolution would create “new and implacable discriminations,” and also said that states which do not recognize same-sex unions as ‘matrimony’ will be pilloried and made an objects of pressure.
However, the French resolution, which is supported by all 27 members of the European Union, says absolutely nothing about gay marriage; it is about ending jail and death penalty sentences gays yet face in more than 85 countries including Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen where you can still be killed for being gay.
An editorial in Italy’s mainstream La Stampa newspaper said the Vatican’s reasoning was “grotesque.” Another editorial in Rome’s La Repubblica newspaper said the Vatican’s position “leaves one dumbstruck.”
Gay rights activist’s in Italy and in other European Union countries fear that the Vatican is calling for another “Holy Alliance” between the Vatican and Islamic states in the United Nations to oppose the proposed resolution, just as they did in 1994, when the Vatican teamed up with Islamic and Latin American countries to defeat an abortion rights proposal.
They have also said that the Vatican’s reasoning smacked of “total idiocy and madness” and what the Vatican really feared was a “chain reaction in favor of legally recognized homosexual unions in countries, like Italy, where there is currently no legislation.”
A Vatican spokesman said yesterday “no-one wants the death penalty or jail or fines for homosexuals”, he however did defend Archbishop Migliore’s comments, adding that the Vatican was in the majority on the issue, pointing out that 50 member states of the United Nations have adhered to the proposal in question while more than 150 have not. (lezgetreal.com)
This would be simply sad if the result of this decision didn’t result in the killing of gay men and women in over 85 countries around the world simply for being gay.
Once upon a time the church was seen as a refuge for the world’s oppressed and downtrodden. It was the champion of the weak, the meek and the disadvantaged. It told us the meek would inherit the Earth. It implored us to treat others as we would want to be treated. The church offered hope to those without hope, love to the unloved, peace to all.
Now the Catholic church has exposed its true nature. It’s nothing more than a repressive government, much like those it supports in the 3rd world.
The killing of gays for being gay is on par with the killing of Jews for being Jewish, which was once done by another government the Catholic church was comfortable allowing to practice genocide. To be sure, they don’t actually kill the gays themselves. They can pretend their hands are without stain. But they will be judged by the rest of humanity by their actions, their spineless refusal to actually practice what they preach.
Not accepting gays in the fold is one thing; to stand by without objection while they are being killed is unconscionable.
Angry Young Men is a journalistic catchphrase applied to a number of British playwrights and novelists from the mid-1950s. The phrase was originally used by British newspapers after the success of the play Look Back in Anger to describe young British writers, though it was derived from the autobiography of Leslie Paul, founder of the Woodcraft Folk, whose “Angry Young Man” was published in 1951.
It has been used more generically, to refer to a young person who strongly criticizes political and social institutions.(Wikipedia)
In the 60s we had the Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panthers, the Yippies and the Weathermen. There were a lot of angry young men, and women. Angry at the Nixon White House, angry about the war in Vietnam, angry about the apparent decline of Western society. I was one of them, a campus leftist radical who sometimes felt the only way change would ever come about was to (figuratively) burn the whole rotten edifice to the ground and rebuild it in the spirit of the founding fathers.
Where are the angry young men today?
In the 40 years since I’ve become quite disillusioned and have found my radicalism to largely be a wasted effort. Obviously America was not ready to change its ways. We needed war to stimulate the economy and keep the military/industrial complex rich and powerful. We didn’t seem to be able to elect a decent president. Americans eschewed the voting booth in favor of daytime soap operas. Americans had become placated, mindless, unquestioning sheep, afraid to challenge the government and unwilling to risk their comfortable lifestyles.
The only favor done to this country by Bush and the fundamental religious-right has been to reignite the radicalism many of us have been repressing for four decades. After eight years of what I can only characterize as the worst presidency of the 20th century people are beginning to wake up to the failure of the American dream.
Ordinary Americans have lost their jobs, their homes and their hope. Their children may not be attending college. They can longer afford to retire. All they’ve worked for, all their goals, have been reduced to ash by greedy shysters and corrupt businessmen. They watch their tax dollars being used to bail out inefficient companies led by unscrupulous charlatans while their small businesses fail and their taxes rise. Americans are becoming mad as hell, and well they should be. They’ve only now woken up to the fact that they’ve been played as suckers. They’ve been stuck with the bill for a party they didn’t even attend.
These conditions incite radicalism. When people have been beaten down as far as they can be, they finally begin to resist, to ask the questions they should have been asking 40 years ago. They start to oppose “business as usual”, they refuse to accept the life handed to them by those who posses the wealth and the power, the same people responsible for their plight. When the shit hits the fan, and there’s no end of shit in sight, at least turn off the fan. People are beginning to demand that we turn off the fan. Then we can start to reduce the pile of shit.
A common radical expression was “Power to the People”. Folks dismissed the idea as too radical for the 60s. Maybe they’ve finally come to understand what we were saying and to agree with those sentiments. We need to reclaim our power as citizens. We need to be reminded that we are the government, we own the government, they work for us. We are the United States of America. We say where the country is headed, we determine the priorities. We expect demand that our representatives actually represent our needs. We didn’t hire them to do what they want but what we want. The Supreme Court’s there to make sure we don’t want something contrary to the Constitution and that’s a good thing. If we subvert the Constitution we deserve to lose our country.
So to all you wealthy preachers preying on those who trust you, to all you bankers and mortgage investors who lent money in bad faith to those most desperately trying to live the dream, to all you auto company executives too stupid to drive the cars you manufacture to a meeting where you beg for our money so you can keep doing the crappy job you’ve been doing while getting filthy rich, instead choosing to fly in your private jets as a further slap in the face of your customers and investors; FUCK YOU.
We need to become radical again. We need radical ideas, radical approaches to the problems we face. We need to face the fact that we cannot go back. The old ways no longer work. The rest of the world has changed. We must adapt or we will perish.
My philosophical hero, Henry Rollins, America Under Attack:
You want to know why so many of us baby-boomers are totally fucked up in the head? Why ours is the generation of Bush, Enron, Obama and Prop. 8? Why we have managed in our time in charge to create a world to hand to the next generation that is so massively corrupt, so doomed to ultimate failure, so messed up in a hundred ways we don’t even understand yet?
Because as impressionable little children we were exposed to this sort of television show. This is what shaped our moral certitude, our innocence in the face of foreign hostility, our irrational belief that we were the model for the rest of the world.
Can any hell be worse than a world populated with nothing but people like these?
Those who believe that this definition was established by or created in accordance with the wishes of some deity will also assume their position to be unassailable. Who can argue with god?
I don’t grant divinity to that concept of marriage when it limits instead of frees, when it excludes instead of includes. To me it’s as outdated, as an accepted definition, as the word “citizen” referring only to white male property owners. In this country, the men who were writing the Constitution were the same guys who got to decide on the definition of citizen. Societies have redefined the concept of citizen many times. Marriage, citizen; they’re not static terms, not divinely inspired terms. They are words that mean different things in different times. Definitions “evolve” along with our society.
Within my lifetime the concept of equal human being has undergone two major revisions. White men have long held a superior position in our society. It was traditional, it was the way the Christian god supposedly preferred it. Then rather suddenly women and Blacks became social equals with the white man. This had never happened with the Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans or native Indians. The white men gave them limited rights but never granted them equality. The white men didn’t hesitate to exploit minorities since they considered them less than equal. They were property like the wife and the maid. Thus far only Blacks and women have nearly completely escaped that limitation.
I have no reason to suppose that a redefinition of the word marriage will threaten society, devalue the already devalued straight Christian definition of marriage or bring on the apocalypse. They can keep right on believing that it means what they think it does and the rest of us can live according to our own beliefs.
Voters in 54 of San Francisco’s 580 precincts supported the ban, with a high of 65 percent of voters favoring it in parts of Chinatown and downtown. More than half of voters in large swaths of Bayview-Hunters Point, Visitacion Valley, the Excelsior and areas around Lake Merced also voted to ban same-sex marriage.
Neighborhoods including the Marina, Laurel Heights and Mission Bay – which almost always vote more conservatively than neighborhoods such as Bayview and Chinatown – voted overwhelmingly against Prop. 8.
“With the racial and religious overprint that we’re seeing, the standard San Francisco politics get thrown out the window on this one,” said political consultant David Latterman, who further crunched the precinct-by-precinct voting results that The Chronicle obtained this week from the Department of Elections.
“This issue is very separate from what we usually think of as liberal and conservative,” he said.
Latterman said the issue played out in San Francisco the same way it plays out everywhere else: Race, age and education were big influences in one’s vote on Prop. 8. Latterman did not factor in religion, but exit polls throughout California showed a strong church affiliation correlated with a vote in favor of the ban among all racial groups.
Voters ages 18 to 29 were overwhelmingly against the measure, while those older 60 were overwhelmingly for it. And those with only a high school education mostly voted for the measure, while those who graduated from college were largely against it.
In Visitacion Valley, where more than half of voters supported Prop. 8, many residents told The Chronicle they voted that way for one of two reasons: their religious beliefs or fear that children would learn about gay marriage in school, which was played up in Yes on 8 television commercials. Some in the neighborhood wrongly believed it was written into the measure.
Note that last paragraph. Most voters made up their minds on Prop. 8 based on misinformation spread by the proponents of the proposition.
This is the challenge to the gay community and those who support equal rights for all citizens. We have to educate those who relied on untruths as their reason for voting in favor of Prop. 8. Decisions based on lies should not be used to deny rights to lawful citizens.
It’s the height of irony that so many Blacks allied themselves with an institution (the Mormon church) that as recently as the 60s didn’t even consider them to be true human beings. Other minority members need to be shown that their ability to vote on this issue wouldn’t have been possible had not America ignored the bigots and religious leaders and given voting rights to them.
Californians and Americans will eventually realize this isn’t an issue of redefining a word, we do that all the time. Nor is it a demand that everyone accept homosexuality as “normal”. It’s a purely civil rights issue, and limiting the rights of any minority in this country is unacceptable.
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